book review: The War for Late Night (4-March)

Yay Bill Carter! One of my favorite writers. He writes about TV for the New York Times and has written books in the past, which I have generally enjoyed. This book was okay too. Not as good as the first book I read from him (just about tv in 2004 or something) but not as dated as his book about the late night wars in the 90's, which was definitely different because I didn't know anything about it. This book might have been just too recent and too played out in the public eye. Ugh, so many names! That was probably the worst part. Lots of background that I didn't ask for, but was definitely interesting about Kimmel and Stewart and oddly even more so, not enough on Fallon!

What did I learn about CoCo Chris...He is even more self-doubtful then we could ever imagine. I kind of had forgotten, but there was a whole thing that he did not want to go to cable, no matter what. (Whoops!). And of course, shit we already knew about Leno. For me, it looks like Leno kind of got screwed when they made the backroom deal with Conan back in 2004 and this time, unfortunately it was Conan who got screwed on the backroom deal that NBC made with Leno. The worst part of the deal, and no one could have even predicted it, is that Conan didn't put a time period cause into his Tonight Show deal and that is really how NBC "won" and how everything got fucked up. If Conan had put that in his deal, that the show had to start before midnight, then Leno might have been out on his ass now and Conan would still have Tonight. I love thinking about alternative worlds like that. NERD ALERT!

Anything, this book was just as interesting as the others, but since it was the most recent, I didn't enjoy it as much as some previous books. But still a good read, if you are interested in this tv news making story of last year. (or is it 2 years ago now? damn, how time flies).